Forum:Naming conventions
I've been half-heartedly following this wiki and saw the poll, and I figured it was worth voicing my opinion. What little I know of the official English names indicate that they're often very poorly translated. Bad choices and interpretations of the original Japanese (which is in the end a subjective issue) aside, many of the translations are flat-out wrong, showing a lack of either effort or basic understanding of or familiarity with the language on the part of the translators (misreading of the characters, etc.). It's my opinion that, even if those translations are technically official, the wiki should have higher standards than that, and would seem a bit more reputable and serious without them. The official names, when available, could perhaps be noted on the Medarots' pages, but the original names should be the ones featured prominently. Dejitaru Ken 04:36, September 6, 2009 (UTC) :Thanks for your opinion. We will take it into account.--SoujiroElric 04:44, September 6, 2009 (UTC) ::Ah, yeah, if it turns out that people want the original names, we will be doing that.--SoujiroElric 23:14, September 6, 2009 (UTC) I've changed my vote to other. In my opinion, preserving the original meaning is better. I am normally using Medarot instead of Medabot, because I have no reason to use Medabot - I never saw the anime, nor played the M2CORE translation. But if using the the translations would attract more people to the Wiki, I would support these instead. So, I'm not quite decided yet. --Sanky ~ talk 09:17, September 6, 2009 (UTC) :That, Sanky, is the whole point. We can perfectly change everything into their original meanings, but people will feel lost. However, the translations are horrible, and what we need to know if people want either the original or the official translations. If we use the original ones always, people will say "hey, where's sumilidon??" when the page is called Smilodonad...--SoujiroElric 21:03, September 6, 2009 (UTC) Hmm. I voted for not using official translations. I really don't think it would alienate people as much as you fear it will. I was in that position (being familiar with only the dub names and finding the best info site used Japanese ones) several years ago with Digimon, and rather than bothering me it made me much more interested. Suddenly all these things that had nonsensical names have descriptive names with real meanings! Also, a lot of people can recognize blatant errors in translation (for example, calling something that looks like a frog "Flog") and it's a common pet peeve, especially when it obfuscates the name origin or ruins a pun. The other thing to take into account is that the series is basically 90% Japanese. For something like Pokémon where you have a popular anime and every game in the series translated consistantly into English, it makes sense to use English names in a wiki. But for a series where well over half the creatures have never even appeared in English media, it's a different matter. Especially because that makes your only option "Use English dub names for some and Japanese for some" which looks highly unprofessional. Finally, it's fairly easy to prevent people who only know the English names from "getting lost." Simply redirect the English names to their respective pages, and add a column or space for English names on any pages that list Medarots. Pictures on the pages will confirm that they're the same one they're looking for. That's my opinion. :) Dekafu 19:07, September 7, 2009 (UTC) :Hm, what you said on the japanese names might be right, and there's a chance people might not get lost. What worries me personally is, what will happen with some Medabots whose names are pretty well know, like Sumilidon and Neutranurse, whose japanese names are Smilodonad and Saintnurse respectively? However you might be right about this, and I hope that, if we get to use japanese names only, the methods that you said work. Thanks for your opinion. :Talking about pictures we should get a way to massively upload sprites...--SoujiroElric 19:24, September 7, 2009 (UTC) Official decision Sorry by posting this late. With Kimbles we finally agreed on a policy, based on the votations. We agreed on naming every article with their japanese original name, to keep consistency with the whole franchise. As most of you should already know, not every Medabot has an official occidental name, specifically some medabots from Medarot 4 and definitively from Medarot 5 onwards. To keep up with this, we will list a translated name whenever applicable in every article. The medabot infobox will be revamped to keep up with this, as so will the lists. Whenever creating an article, try to use its japanese name, and if needed, create the redirect pages by writing #redirect article on it (say, in the Totalizer article it says #redirect Kiethturtle). Following up this will help to keep our wiki clean. Thank you everyone.--SoujiroElric 06:11, October 3, 2009 (UTC) Category:Forums